TEPCO failed to deliver on promise to install fence to restrict contamination from leaking into Pacific Ocean

Both Japan and TEPCO have drawn harsh international criticism for slow responses to contaminated water leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. When Japan was lobbying to host the 2020 olympics, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the International Olympic Committee that the effects from the contaminated water have been perfectly blocked within the (artificial) bay” of the wrecked nuclear complex, and said “the situation is under control.”

More than two and a half years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, officials in Japan have now admitted that in June of 2011 TEPCO promised to build fences to block radioactive water from leaking from the plant, but did not ever actually install the fences. At the time, TEPCO asked the government not to announce that they had committed to constructing the fences, as the utility was concerned that the $1 billion construction cost would increase its debt, the government agreed not to publicize the arrangement, but then TEPCO did not undertake the work they promised to complete.

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TEPCO, Elvis has left the buildings. MELT, Muon Energy Location Technology has identified where Elvis is below the reactor buildings. TEPCO when will you share Elvis’s location with the world? What are you afraid of? It’s just Elvis. Rock N Roll here we come?

I wonder if “fence” was the intended word in TEPCO’s commitment. Fences normally aren’t designed to block water flow. Anyhow they are bedeviled by the flow of groundwater through the plant property. They need barriers to divert the groundwater around the plant property, and they need to decontaminate the water currently being stored to a level that it can be released to the ocean.

Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires, that the “effects from the contaminated water have been perfectly blocked within the (artificial) bay” of the...